Lucky Cap

by Patrick Jennings

  He didn’t live far from Stan. I decided to drop by and do a little spying.

  Mom was in the car outside, waiting for me. I’d forgotten about that. I walked over to the driver’s side.

  “Hey, Lenchito,” she said after she rolled down her window. “You ready? How was your day?”

  “Perfecto,” I lied. “Can I go over to a friend’s for a little while? He lives close by.”

  Mom tightened her lips, which she does when she’s irritated. “Okay, but I wish I’d known about this before I drove all the way over here. Next time call, okay?”

  “We just decided. Sorry.”

  I didn’t like lying to her, but what else could I do?

  “How will you get home?” she asked.

  I hadn’t thought about that. I really needed to start thinking things through better.

  “His mom will drive me,” I lied.

  She nodded. She believed me. Believed my lies. That didn’t feel good.

  “Be home by six thirty,” she said, then drove away.

  If I was going to squeeze in a spy trip to Lance’s house and make it home by six thirty, I had to hurry.

  So I ran. Soon I saw Lance up ahead with Chase. They were talking and shoving and laughing. Things were obviously real good between them. That’s because I was out of the picture. I could imagine how pleased Lance was about that.

  I wanted to eavesdrop on them, so I kept a safe distance. Sometimes, when I thought they saw me, I ducked behind a tree. But they never did.

  Chase continued on when they got to Lance’s house. Lance went in. His house was one story, which would make spying easier. It was also dark out, which meant I could peek into windows without being seen.

  Through the living room window, I watched Lance drop his backpack and jacket onto the floor. Then he went into the kitchen and talked to his mom, who was cooking dinner. I smelled roasting chicken. I was hungry.

  Lance then walked out of the kitchen and a couple of seconds later a light came on in a different window. I crept up to it and peeked in. It was his bedroom. He was closing the door behind him. I hoped he wasn’t going to change his clothes.

  He didn’t. He powered up his computer, then fell onto his back on what I assumed was his bed. I couldn’t see him after that. I looked at his walls. He had posters tacked up of basketball players and skateboarders. He didn’t have any posters signed by any famous basketball players and skateboarders, though.

  I did.

  I waited for something to happen. I waited for him, specifically, to dig my cap out of some drawer or hiding place and put it on his head and admire himself in the mirror. He didn’t.

  I got bored. Bored, cold, and hungrier. I began to wonder what I was doing peeking in the windows of the house of a guy I didn’t like, and I also began to worry that it might actually be illegal, and that maybe I’d made yet another bonehead decision. There were houses up and down the street on both sides. What if somebody looked out their window and saw me creeping around?

  Panicked, I stood up—at the exact time that Lance finally got up from his bed. Wouldn’t you know it? We stood there, facing each other in the window. He was a foot or so higher than me. I was wrong about my being able to peek in the windows without being seen. He definitely could see me. He looked surprised at first. Then he grinned down at me.

  I turned to run but got tangled up in the little white metal decorative fence around the bushes and fell onto my face on the lawn. I heard a muted laugh, then heavy footsteps running through the house. I struggled with the idiotic little fence long enough to give Lance time to show up and fire off a couple shots with his cell phone, laughing diabolically the whole time.

  “Just wait till these get out,” he stopped cackling long enough to say. “Wait till Killer sees them!”

  At last I freed myself from the mini-fence, and jumped to my feet.

  “You stole my cap!” I yelled, pointing my finger at him.

  Flash.

  “Oh, that was a good one,” Lance said. “You look totally insane. One more.”

  I was insane. Totally. I lunged for the camera. He danced out of the way.

  Flash.

  He tripped me as I sailed by. I landed in the grass.

  “Very dignified, Mr. President,” Lance said. “Presidential, I’d say.”

  I got to my feet.

  “You have one week to return the cap or I go to the police,” I said wildly.

  Flash.

  “I wish my phone had video,” he mumbled loud enough for me to hear. “I knew I should have grabbed my mom’s camera…”

  Suddenly, it struck me: what was I still doing there?

  I turned and ran. Into a tree.

  Flash.

  I got up off the ground (again) and ran away. Fast. This time, I did so without any physical comedy or photo opportunities. I ran and ran and ran. My lungs burned from the running and the cold.

  Finally, I had to stop and catch my breath. I dug out my cell, which, of course, was dead.

  I started running again. It felt kind of good, actually. I ran most of the way home. When at last I got there, I was totally exhausted and sweaty.

  Lupe was standing inside the door, her arms crossed, smiling.

  “You’re late,” she said. “Dinner’s over.”

  I glanced at the girly, silvery, cloud-shaped clock on the mantel: seven fifteen.

  “What’s it to you?” I asked, and pushed by her.

  “They know about your detention.”

  I froze. “You told them?”

  “I told them.”

  I tried to vaporize her with my eyes. It didn’t work.

  “They know you lost your cap, too. And that you got dropped from the starting five. I had to give them all the details for it to make sense.”

  She was having the time of her life. Lucky for her, Dad appeared right then, or it might have been the end of her life.

  “Can we talk, Enzo?” he asked.

  Lupe beamed.

  “Sure,” I said, firing more visual vaporizing rays at my evil sister. In a perfect world they would have worked.

  Dad grounded me for a week. Not because I lost the cap, but because I broke into Chase’s duffel, got caught, and got detention. It was like I got punished for getting punished once again. I mean, all I did was unzip my friend’s duffel bag to see if the cap he stole was in there. The cap of mine he stole. What was wrong with that?

  So while I was feeling that there was no justice in the world and wondering if maybe Lupe stole my cap—just to see me suffer—Dad decided it was a good time to drop a bomb.

  “I’m thinking of giving notice, Enzo.”

  “Notice?”

  “I might quit my job at Kap.” He set his hand on my knee and patted it as if a relative had just died.

  I wished it had been only that.

  “Stop joking,” I said, pushing his hand away. I needed it to be a joke. A very bad joke in extremely bad taste.

  “It’s just not a good fit,” Dad said. “I don’t know, maybe I’m just too old…”

  “NO!” I screamed. “You CAN’T QUIT! Take it back! Now! Take it back!”

  “Calm down, Enzo…”

  “Not till you tell me you’re not quitting! Tell me, Dad! You can’t quit, Dad! You CAN’T!” I was freaking out, big-time. It was becoming kind of a habit with me.

  Dad took a deep breath. I hate when he does that when I’m freaking out. Breathe, that is. If I can’t breathe, why should he?

  “Listen, Enzo. Kap is too aggressive for my tastes. They go after kids, and I don’t hold with that. And they try to run small, independent stores out of business. Like G&W. It’s as if they need to be the absolute biggest, coolest, richest athletic company on earth.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Sometimes I just didn’t get the guy.

  “I don’t need to be a part of that.”

  “I do!” I wailed, and fell onto my knees.

  Dad looked down at me, a little disgusted, I
think. I didn’t care. My life was coming apart at the seams. Blowing apart at the seams. He couldn’t take Kap away from me, too.

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” he said calmly. “Look what my working there has done to you.”

  “What’s it done to me?” I asked. “Except make me athletic and popular? Class president? Starter on the basketball team? Big guy on campus?”

  “Kap didn’t do that.”

  “Really? Because I sure wasn’t like that before Kap hired you.”

  “Don’t be silly. You did that, Enz.”

  “Get a reality check, Dad. The second that cap hit my head, my life got better. Got great. Amazing! The second it disappeared, my life went down the toilet. I lost everything.”

  “Not everything.”

  “Everything.”

  “You didn’t lose me.”

  “This is no time to get cheesy, Dad. I’m serious. I’ve got to get that cap back. Can you at least get me another one like it before you quit?” I clasped my hands together like I was praying. I was praying. “Pleeeease, Dad? Get me another prototype. Pleeeease?”

  “There aren’t any more prototypes,” he said. “The model’s on the market now.”

  “What? You mean anyone can buy one now?”

  “Yes…”

  “Then I have to get mine back. It’s a prototype. It has magic.” I looked deep into his eyes. “Magic, Dad!”

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  I went limp, fell onto the couch. All was lost.

  “Let it go, Enz. It’s just a cap. You have others.”

  Poor old man. Poor, foolish, naïve old man.

  “Don’t get into any more trouble because of it. Promise me.”

  I held up my hand and crossed my fingers.

  “Good,” he said. “Now come and get some dinner. Your mom saved you a plate.”

  The next day, I saw my cap on some kid’s stupid head, and I pounced on him.

  We both got dragged to the principal’s office. It wasn’t my cap, of course. It wasn’t signed by LeBron James. The kid had bought it at the mall. Like Dad said, the model was on the market. That had slipped my mind when I was seized with capmania.

  “Do you believe this was behavior befitting a class president?” Ms. Kish asked me.

  Befitting?

  “No, ma’am,” I said.

  “I see you got a detention yesterday,” she said, flipping through my file.

  I had a file.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  More flipping. “You hadn’t been in any trouble this year before that, is that right?”

  I nodded.

  She set her elbows on my file and leaned toward me. “So what’s been different for you lately, Enzo?”

  I didn’t know if I could trust her. But I decided to risk it. I mean, who wouldn’t sympathize with my recent tragedy?

  “I lost my cap,” I said.

  Not “My cap was stolen” or “My magic cap was stolen.” I didn’t want to give her the chance to think I was nuts.

  She leaned back, softened a little. “This cap meant a lot to you?”

  “The world,” I said.

  “And you thought this other boy took it?”

  “His cap looked just like mine.”

  “I see. Sounds like an honest mistake…”

  “Oh, it totally was!”

  “But you certainly handled the situation very poorly. If you suspected the boy had your cap, you should have reported it. You definitely should not have attacked him.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to give you another lunch detention.”

  “Are you serious?” Obviously, these adults had me confused with a bad kid. I was a good kid. Who had been wronged. I was a victim.

  “I’m afraid so, and I’m going to have to give you a warning as well, regarding the office you hold. If you are given one more disciplinary action this semester, I’m afraid you will have to be impeached.”

  “Impeached?”

  “Removed from office.”

  It just got better and better.

  I was then released back into the school population, where everyone pointed and laughed at me. At least that was how it seemed. I wondered if it was about my jumping the kid with the cap, or if Lance had e-mailed the pictures of me he’d taken all over the school. I later learned it was both, with a little nasty gossip thrown in about me harassing cheerleaders.

  I saw another guy wearing my cap, but I didn’t attack him. I was learning. The cap was out and catching on. It was probably going to be a hit. Maybe that was why Evan gave the prototype to me in the first place: to get other kids interested in it. I knew Kap gave away free stuff sometimes so kids would wear it around, showing it off, like they were miniature mobile billboards.

  Most of us kids weren’t that lucky, though, and had to beg our parents to go out and pay for the stuff with the brand names we wanted. That meant the customers (our parents) paid the companies to dress their own kids in ads for the companies.

  Evan told me this was how big companies got free advertising. It was something he called “branding.” It reminded me of cows, and maybe that’s what it was. Kap branded kids instead.

  Maybe that’s what Dad meant when he said Kap went after kids. Maybe Evan went after me. Maybe that’s why he’d invited me on the trip in the first place. To brainwash me. To Kap me. To Kap Stan. To Kap Pasadero. And eventually, the world. The cap was sure cool enough to take over the world.

  Those guys at big companies like Kap are so smart!

  I guess I should be grateful for everything Kap gave me. I got a great month and a half of traveling with Dad and Evan. I’ll never forget it. Ever. I got the cap, which got me elected class president (Was that good? I still hadn’t decided…) and got me on the basketball team. That was good—at least till it got stolen and I got detention and got dropped from the starting five.

  Maybe the cap wasn’t really magical at all. Maybe it was just lucky, like a lucky rabbit’s foot or a four-leaf clover. When you had the cap, good things happened. When you didn’t, bad things happened. That’s the thing about luck. There’s two kinds: good and bad. There’s no in-between.

  Before I got the cap, I had a best friend, a dog, and a family. None of them were super great. The best friend wouldn’t grow up, the dog was a spaz, and the family was mostly girls. The parents were okay, with okay jobs. We weren’t rich, but we weren’t poor. I wasn’t lucky or unlucky.

  After Kap, I still had the spastic dog, only now he wore earrings, and the girls had ruined the house with girl stuff. Dad had the coolest job on the planet, but was considering quitting it. And the best friend? I’d lost him.

  Did I have any friends?

  I sat next to Iris in homeroom to find out.

  * Yes, I skipped Chapter 13. If hotels can be superstitious, so can I.

  15. Girl Friend

  “Am I total loser now?” I asked Iris.

  “Yes, Mr. President,” she said.

  “And it’s because I lost the cap, right?”

  “No, sir. It’s because you think it’s because you lost the cap.”

  I nodded. I understood that. “I’ve given up on finding it. I don’t care about it anymore.”

  “Glad to hear it, sir.”

  “My dad’s thinking about quitting his job at Kap.”

  “So no more caps?”

  “I still have plenty.” I took off the one I was wearing and stowed it under my seat. “I got another detention.”

  “I heard.”

  “Already?”

  “Middle school’s a fishbowl, sir.”

  “Did you see the pictures Lance took?”

  She snickered.

  I glared.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Tell me something, Iris,” I said. “Why do you get out of the bed in the morning?”

  She made a serious expression, which made me uncomfortable.

  “You should talk to Kai,” she sai
d softly.

  “Nah. He hates me now. Anyway, he should.”

  “I bet he doesn’t.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. I doubt it.”

  I wasn’t going to talk to him.

  Coach asked me into his office when I arrived at the gym for P.E. He suspended me from the team for a week, which was two games plus practices, because of Ms. Kish’s detention. That’s right, a suspension for a detention. I was being punished for being punished. Things were getting out of hand.

  “Did you find your cap?” he asked.

  “No. But I gave up looking. It’s caused me nothing but trouble.”

  “Good plan.”

  “The cheerleader you saw was just delivering a note, by the way,” I said.

  “I see,” he said.

  “Do I have to tell you her name?” I didn’t want to get Misa in trouble.

  “No. Let’s just put all this behind us.”

  “After two games,” I added. “And practices.”

  He smiled. “Right. Stay in shape, now. And stay out of trouble.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and suited up for P.E.

  I’d now told both Coach and Iris I was done thinking about who stole my cap. But I wasn’t. I still thought about it all the time. Did I still want it back? Did I still need to know who took it? What did I want? And what didn’t I want? I thought about it all during math class instead of paying attention. Here’s some of the things I thought:

  I wanted to play on the team.

  I wanted to be a starter.

  I still wanted to hang out with Chase. He was a good guy.

  I didn’t want to hang out with Lance. He was a bad guy.

  I wanted to be a good guy. I wanted to stay out of trouble.

  I wanted to hang out with Kai again.

  I didn’t want Analisa to be mad at me anymore, and wanted to hang out with her, even though she was a girl.

  I didn’t want the cap back. It caused too much trouble.

  I wanted to know who took it.

  I didn’t want to punish them.

  I just wanted to know why they took it.

  I wrote my letter of resignation during lunch detention. I gave it to Iris during social studies. I wasn’t sure who to hand it to, and I didn’t feel like digging into the handbook to find out. This lack of interest in school rules alone was reason enough to show me I wasn’t cut out to lead our class.